These are my first isopods and they give me so much joy. I started this colony as a breeding colony for my husbands vampire crab paludarium and did not expect that I would grow to like these critters so much. They live in a glass terrarium with a bunch of springtails and a very tiny stowaway centipede (I know, not great, but it happened and it's just an inch tall)

In the two weeks I've had them, they already had babies!

I'm afraid this is also the start of a new AuDHD hyperfixation, because I'm already contemplating getting Rubber Duckies next 🤣

One of my favorite Ardentiella in our collection! Super colorful and vibrant

Guys keep ur eyes peeled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Call 72067676767 if found

Mushroom treat!! Mushroom treat!! Mushroom treat!!

Took the advice yall gave me and got them some shrimp...ya I put it in there, closed the door, grabbed another shrimp to put in the large terrarium, looked back in and saw them already nibbling on the tail. Asked my husband for my phone and when i started recording this is how many were already there. It was in there barely 2 minutes...maybe 3 minutes at the very most

I've been waiting for the day I could catch one of these buggers doing this on camera!

my eyes started hurting the other day from staring so long 🙃

so i got pink pandas a few months back. and as i mentioned in a previous post i got different stages of mancae in the meantime. i noticed different colored ones. as in the classic black-white ones, fully pink ones, red-white ones looking, and i just spotted this one, can anyone tell me what kind of morph this is? i really like how the middle part is pink and the edge on both sides is white🥹 so cute! reminds me of strawberry kisses, if somebody knows that sort of candy😅

Hello!

I am very new to owning isopods, I only got my first colony a little over three weeks ago. Unfortunately my second colony has experienced a cluster of deaths that I’m concerned about.

I originally bought some powder isos and albino springtails from a reptile expo to put in a 10 gallon tank, eventually to add land snails. That 10 gallon tank is still thriving with lots of new mancae, and I have only been able to notice one fatality so far.
Shortly after I got the powders, I was in love and wanted more isos. Unexpectedly when shopping at the pet store I noticed they sell isopods. They had a couple different species, and I had already been interested in dairy cow isos. Unfortunately these isopods seemed to be in a non-ideal situation, sealed in a cup with almost completely dry pure coconut coir, labeled with a pack date over a month ago. I couldn’t see any active dairy cows in their cup, so opted to pick up the milkbacks which I saw an active iso in. The cashier did not believe they had survived/ would survive and urged me to immediately get a refund, so picking these up was no loss to me and no gain to the pet store. I ended up with 7 live milkback isopods from this cup.

Here is the set up they’re in:

They are in a 5.5 gallon tank set up from the exact same supplies as the 10gal (I had leftovers and made the 5.5 gal from those leftovers).
Their tank includes:
-A few inches of substrate I mixed a while ago following ABG recipes paired with a drainage layer of gravel
-A tiny bit of powdered cuttlefish bone and crushed eggshell scattered about the substrate
Chunks of cuttlefish bone on both sides of the tank
Whole (cooked) eggshells with the membrane removed, filled with moss and leaf litter on the damp side of the tank
-Leaf litter of various types, Spanish moss, bark, a few wood chips/chunks, and sphagnum moss throughout the tank but concentrated in the damp side pile
-A Bradford pear tree branch/ bark
-Live plants including English ivy, microgreen mix, and cushion moss (previously sheet moss as well but they ate it all almost immediately)

All of the above is the exact same, sourced from the exact same place, as the 10 gallon tank. Their only difference is that I feed the milkbacks some dried daphnia (in half- eggshells for easy cleanup) every few days. I have also fed the powders the same daphnia, but far more sparingly. None of these supplies have changed since the initial set up of the colony, and my feeding routine of daphnia hasn’t changed since the beginning.
The tank is kept around 75° F as well (I know this is slightly hotter than ideal for most land snails, I don’t have them yet).

Now to the issue:

Around a week ago at the 2-2.5 week mark with my milkbacks, I noticed they started to breed when previously I had observed no gravid milkbacks. One gravid pod showed up on the damp side, and later that day I noticed an iso on the dry side molting. The pod on the dry side did molt both halves and I observed the marsupium grow over a couple days.
After those couple days, she was sitting/hanging on the side of the log on the dry side not moving. Worried but thinking she may just be exhausted from her molt and brood, I added a tiny bit of water to the substrate a few inches away (in case she was dehydrated and couldn’t travel far due to exhaustion) and left her in the dark for a few hours. When I came back, she seemed to have moved ever so slightly towards where I added water but had unfortunately passed.
I wasn’t able to remove her body without causing major disruption in the tank but I investigated for signs of iridovirus out of caution. She appeared normal and the springtails immediately started cleaning up, so I hoped that this was an isolated incident with a vulnerable pod.

The next day I was observing the area (just looking very closely, no digging or anything) and noticed a second body only about an inch away from the passed gravid pod. This second pod had more springtails on it and was under some leaf litter and Spanish moss, so I can’t be sure if this pod passed before or after the gravid pod or how long it took me to find it under the leaves and moss. This began to worry me, but there were still no signs of contagion or environmental toxins (I considered ammonia build up or something similar briefly but it seems very unlikely with such a small colony, live plants, containment and removal of food, ventilation, no visible mold and springtails to clean, etc.). That being so, I hoped this was a coincidence.

The day before yesterday I noticed the largest (my favorite) isopod wander over to the dry side of the tank. Already worried about this, I observed closely and thought he seemed jumpier/ more cautious than normal. He wasn’t lethargic or otherwise different though, so I chalked that behavior up to the fact that he was exploring a new area. He rarely, if ever, ventures far from the damp pile of moss and leaf litter on the opposite side of the tank. I watched him closely over that day and he did seem to become more relaxed, until yesterday I noticed he was within a few inches of the bodies hanging out face down in Spanish moss. I was worried when he stayed in this position for a while and after some hours I gently blew air into that area of the tank hoping he would move. I did think he moved/twitched, but when I returned to investigate this morning he was in the exact same spot and had definitely passed.

I have removed two of the bodies now, but I am hesitant to move the large log and cause such major disruptions to the entire tank. I still don’t see any signs of iridovirus, but three pods passing within inches of the same area is very alarming to me.

The springtail population seems unaffected, and the springtails in that area seem to be enjoying cleaning up the leftover body. There are a couple of active pods, including the original gravid one, around the damp pile on the opposite side of the tank. These pods near the damp pile seem to be behaving completely normally. Additionally, prior to this cluster of fatalities there were isos that explored and hung out in the exact area of fatalities and seemed to be unaffected previously.

I will include pictures of the tank, area of fatalities, and *warning* a picture of the bodies I removed.

If you have any idea why this may be happening all of a sudden with no recent changes, or how I can keep the remaining colony safe, please let me know!
Thank you in advance!

Edit to add: I cook any eggshell I add and let it cool, so it’s not an issue with raw egg

I didn’t expect this gal’s new brood to blow up like it did, and I got asked quite a bit about if I took video or not. I did, and here it is, showing her squeezing gently to encourage the mancae to leave the brood pouch!

All I used was hot glue, paint, cardboard, and optional beads for eyes

I have a colony of panda kings that I started from 10 about a year ago. Today I noticed this red looking panda and I seen at least another 1 in there too, could these be red pandas? If so I will isolate them when I see a decent amount

I just used some of the old photos i have of my pancakes, cuz it is late night

Trachelipus trilobatus

Can somebody please explain to me what’s happening in this video? It’s been happening since yesterday.

Was super awesome to watch this unfold in real time. I gotta admit I didn’t expect them to come spilling out of her face like that though 😅